Slashdot Mirror
Indian School Textbook Says Meat-Eaters Lie and Commit Sex Crimes
another random user writes with bad news from the BBC for anybody who enjoys a hamburger now and again:
"Meat-eaters 'easily cheat, lie, forget promises and commit sex crimes,' according to a controversial school textbook available in India. New Healthway, a book on hygiene and health aimed at 11 and 12 year-olds, is printed by one of India's leading publishers. 'This is poisonous for children,' Janaki Rajan of the Faculty of Education at Jamia Millia University in Delhi told the BBC. 'The government has the power to take action, but they are washing their hands of it,' she said. 'The strongest argument that meat is not essential food is the fact that the Creator of this Universe did not include meat in the original diet for Adam and Eve. He gave them fruits, nuts and vegetables,' reads a chapter entitled Do We Need Flesh Food? The chapter details the 'benefits' of a vegetarian diet and goes on to list 'some of the characteristics' found among non-vegetarians. 'They easily cheat, tell lies, forget promises, they are dishonest and tell bad words, steal, fight and turn to violence and commit sex crimes,' it says."
except for the God and Adam and Eve part.. they don't believe in that shit
Next time an American school demands their textbooks "teach the controversy" of intelligent design or some other bullshit, we should show them this Indian textbook as an example of how doctoring our textbooks is making us look to the rest of the world.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
What has ever caused more human suffering than religion?
It all depends. When I was in grad school, my research group would do presentations over research papers once a week, with each of us picking a paper that sounded interesting and presenting it to the others on a round robin basis. Most of the time, we were pretty safe in selecting a pool of maybe 10 candidate papers by pulling ones with interesting titles and abstracts. From there, you'd read the intros and conclusions of each to get a good idea of what sort of material they'd cover, then you'd announce which one you were presenting, read through it completely, and put together your presentation.
But there was this one paper that burned me bad. It had a solid intro and solid conclusion with claims of having had great results, so, since I was a trusting sort, I announced my intention to present the paper. Only then did I see that the methodology they had claimed in their intro and conclusion was not the methodology that they had actually followed in their experiments, nor were their results nearly as impressive as they had led the reader to believe. Their claims in the intro and conclusion were on par with, "and so we have definitively found the cure for leukemia," while their middle consisted of something on par with, "we took a biopsy and determined that cancer does indeed exist." And it was supposedly written by two professors at an Indian university (a PhD and a Masters) and another PhD.
That said, a number of my friends in grad school were Indian students, many of whom put me to shame with their intelligence and talent. I also met my share of Indian students in grad school who made me look like a genius as they clearly struggled to keep up with even the simplest of material. But I could say the same for Chinese students, Korean students, and American students who were in my classes as well, some of whom were smarter than me and some of whom were definitely not.
Long story short, I would agree that India needs to do a better job of improving various standards and expectations as it develops further, but to dismiss them entirely is unfair and uncalled for. As with any major nation, there are plenty of people there, some of whom are wonderful, talented, and a pleasure to work with, while there are others of who really are a shame to their country.
You cut out a tonne of junk food. In Vegan's case it's usually fast food. That's literally why I went vegetarian -> It' keeps me away from Fast Food hamburgers, which I can eat and eat and eat.
You know what else keeps you from eating fast food burgers, yet still allows you to eat meat? Not going to fast food restaurants.
Oh man, where to begin with a post like this...
First of all, it has been my experience that, as ESL speakers, Indians are among the most fluent in the world. It seems to me that they take great care to learn and use English well, unlike the stumbling parody you provided. No doubt a consequence of British colonialism, but perhaps a happy one.
Second, it is my opinion that the English language is very much enriched by hearing it spoken in so many fascinating accents. Let's face it: every one of us has an accent that sounds "funny" to more than one other culture in the world. We can giggle now and then about how weird we sound to each other, but let's keep it at a good-natured level.
Third, learning a second language is difficult. Those who speak something other than English as a second language are all-too-well aware of the challenge. Just imagine how you would sound trying to order a meal in a foreign land. Probably much worse than the example you gave. And yet you just might find that the server is pleased at your effort.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Oh man, where to begin with a post like this...
First of all, it has been my experience that, as ESL speakers, Indians are among the most fluent in the world. It seems to me that they take great care to learn and use English well, unlike the stumbling parody you provided
Sure, most Indians can speak English pretty well. But if you've never encountered the sort of post the GP was parodying, you must not have been on many programming forums. For instance, here's a fine example of the form:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rubyonrails-talk/PlZOm0qlYMI/discussion
The original author literally *pasted* an interview question and just said "help me in finding solution" in the subject. When a couple people call him on it, he breaks into a semi-coherent string of posts laden with Kannada invective.
Beyond that, if I had a nickel for every "pls give me the codes" post I'd seen, I'd be able to retire...
'They easily cheat, tell lies, forget promises, they are dishonest and tell bad words, steal, fight and turn to violence and commit sex crimes,' it says.
That was supposed to go in the section on politicians.
But seriously, this "textbook" must have been written by a meat eater - or else how can it be filled with such vicious lies?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !